1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a fuse, and in particular to a fuse assembly with a function of indicating a state of a fuse by light.
2. Description of Prior Art
The fuse is an over-current protection device that is widely used in electronic products or circuits. When the electronic product suffers damage or the circuit is in an abnormal state, the current will rise instantaneously. When the current flowing through the fuse exceeds its maximum capacity, the fuse will be blown to prevent the excessive current from damaging the electronic elements within the electronic product. Therefore, the fuse can protect the electronic product and can be used to check a circuit.
In practice, more than one fuse is used in an electronic product. A car or a large-scale power-distributing apparatus is provided with rows of fuses, thereby protecting the electronic elements against an over-current respectively. However, when one of the fuses is blown or needs to be replaced or checked, the operator has to check the rows of fuses one by one, which causes a lot of inconvenience in use.
Therefore, a fuse assembly combined with a light-emitting body is proposed. The light-emitting body is provided with a casing of the fuse assembly. Specifically, the light-emitting body is disposed between two metallic conductive pieces and in parallel to the fuse. In a normal state, the current only flows through the fuse without passing through the light-emitting body, so that the light-emitting body does not illuminate. When the fuse is blown due to an over-current, the current will flow through the light-emitting body, so that the light-emitting body illuminates to indicate the blowing of the fuse. In this way, it is convenient for the operator to check and replace the damaged fuses.
However, in practice, the above-mentioned fuse assembly still has some drawbacks as follows. Since the light-emitting body is inserted and accommodated in the casing of the fuse assembly, when a fuse is blown, the light-emitting body is thrown away together with the damaged fuse, which causes the waste of materials and money. Especially, in order to conform to the requirement for environmental protection, it is necessary to improve such a fuse assembly. On the other hand, the manufacturing procedure of mounting the light-emitting body within the fuse assembly is more complicated. Also, the cost of assembling is larger.
Therefore, it is an important issue for the present Inventor to overcome the above problems.